International House of Stockholm
by Lauralot
Summary: The only thing the Winter Soldier is sure of in the world is that the best pancakes have bosenberry syrup.


A/N: An explanation for this absurdity: So Frank Grillo, Brock Rumlow's actor, makes his sons pancakes for breakfast _every single day._ I know this because he's constantly posting pictures of said pancakes on his Instagram. So then the Fuck Yeah Brock Rumlow Tumblr combined several of the Instagram pancake pictures with a scan from _Winter Soldier_ Issue 1 of Black Widow telling the Soldier he's not allowed to pick a pancake house _again_ when they're headed to a restaurant. So "Winter Soldier likes pancakes because Crossbones introduced him to them" became a thing in my mind. Rumlow's also _somewhat_ less of a jerk in this one, because it's impossible to look at Frank Grillo's Instagrams and not be overwhelmed with good feelings for the man.

* * *

It's in a bank vault in DC where Steve finds Bucky, huddled in a chair and trembling like a lost child. Steve knows what the chair is for—he'd memorized the information from the file Natasha provided and then he'd torn the page into tiny, crumpled pieces—and the way Bucky's hands grip the arms, not bracing himself against pain but clinging as if to a favored blanket, nearly breaks him.

"Hey Bucky," he says softly. "How are you feeling?"

The eyes that meet his through dark, matted strands of hair do not belong to the Winter Soldier. They don't belong to Bucky Barnes either. Bucky had never looked so lost and hopeless, not even when Steve had found him strapped down in Zola's lab. "I know you," Bucky says, frowning to himself as though he doesn't know what to do with that knowledge. Doesn't know what to do with any thought HYDRA didn't supply.

"Yeah." Steve smiles, more for Bucky's benefit than from the muted relief below his horror. "Yeah, Buck, you know me."

"But you were older," Bucky whispers.

It takes a moment to realize it isn't him that Bucky's remembering. Something shatters within Steve when he works it out, but he forces himself to hold the pieces together for now. For Bucky's sake.

"Hey," he says. "It's all right, Bucky. You'll figure it out, we'll—are you hungry?" He looks starving. Starving and scared out of his mind. "You must be hungry. I can get you food, I can get anything you want, okay?" And God help him, if Bucky can't answer that, if Bucky hasn't had real food in seventy years, Steve won't be able to keep from falling apart.

Bucky mutters something unintelligible before drawing in on himself, shivers running down his frame.

"What was that?" Steve tries to make his voice as gentle as possible, not even daring to step forward.

"Can't say," Bucky whispers without raising his head. "Secret."

"You can tell me anything, Bucky. I promise. You won't be in trouble."

Bucky is silent for a long time. Then, shakily, "Pancakes."

* * *

"This is a secret," Rumlow stresses, motioning for the Soldier to sit down in the booth. "A secret. You remember what a secret is?"

There's no guarantee that he does. The Soldier learns best through repetition and Rumlow must have explained secrets at least fifty times during the Great Christmas Shopping Excursion of 1999, but that was 1999. The Soldier's had a lot of sleep and memory wipes in the time since.

"Secrets," the Soldier intones flatly, "consist of information that does not need to be included in the mission report to the Secretary."

"Good." Rumlow tugs on the sleeve of the jacket they put on the Soldier, making sure his left hand is concealed.

Bringing the Winter Soldier into a pancake house has to be the dumbest idea since the Great Christmas Shopping Excursion of 1999, but this time it's not Rumlow's fault. Rollins had underestimated the number of MREs necessary when packing for this mission, and Anders had started to black out in the van. She tried to pass it off as a temporary drop in blood sugar, saying it was fine. But it wasn't fine, and like hell Rumlow was going to let anyone fall ill on his watch. So here they are.

The Soldier's presence beside him is an unfortunate necessity. They couldn't leave him in the van unattended; it's boiling outside. And even though the chances of the Soldier going rogue are infinitesimal, Rumlow's still not about to be the idiot who left the Soldier alone in a running vehicle. So here they are, and Rumlow will just have to hope that the Soldier isn't set off by misbehaving children or the phrase "Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity."

But the Soldier behaves. He sits silently, staring down at the table—and, once the food arrives, at Brock's plate—with a gaze that's disturbing in its steadiness.

"I think he's hungry," Rollins says.

The Soldier's stare has been fixed on Rumlow's pancakes since the waitress set the plate down. They're blueberry and cloyingly sweet, discarded after one bite, but Rumlow hesitates. None of the technicians have ever said whether the Soldier can eat normal food. He's never needed to in the time Rumlow's worked with him.

Still, waving food right out of a hungry dog's reach is just asking to get bit.

"Here." Rumlow slides the plate in front of the Soldier. "Don't you dare throw up." He imagines the blueberry topping seeping into the grooves of the metal arm and adds, "And don't make a mess."

If the Soldier has any concerns about his ability to digest pancakes, he doesn't express them. Of course he doesn't; he isn't programmed to question orders. They watch as the Soldier slides a forkful into his mouth. He pauses, shuddering, and for a second Rumlow scoots back, sure that the Soldier's about to be violently sick.

But the Soldier isn't ill. He lowers the fork and he's smiling, _glowing_ like this is the greatest moment of his life. It probably is.

Rollins says, "I can't tell if that's horrifying or adorable."

The Soldier seems torn between shoving his face into the plate like a starved animal and making the meal last as long as it can. He is shaking and wide-eyed and when Anders taps his hand, Rumlow tenses, expecting the Soldier to stab her with the fork.

He doesn't. He just stares as Anders nudges the syrup bottles in his direction. "Go on," she says, but it isn't until Rumlow nods that the Soldier selects one.

He chooses boyensberry, thick and deep red, like blood. It drips around his mouth and it ought to be terrifying, but there's vulnerability and a passion that Rumlow's never seen in the Soldier. And all it took to draw it out was something as simple as mediocre, sugary breakfast food.

Rumlow shrugs it off. Everyone heads back to the van and back to the vault. And if Rumlow ends up making pancakes the next time there's a mission with both down time and a reliable heating element? Well, that would only be a logical reward for the Soldier, to stress the benefits of keeping his mouth shut when his commander orders it.

* * *

Pancakes. Steve can make pancakes. He can't make Bucky remember him and he doesn't know where to _start_ unraveling decades of brainwashing and torture, but he can make pancakes. He will make all the pancakes in the world if that gives Bucky even a hint of comfort.

Sarah Rogers made the world's greatest pancakes. Steve is admittedly biased in that assertion, but Bucky had agreed. He always had a sense about Steve's mother's pancakes, some uncanny ability to stop by whenever she was making them. He was like a bloodhound from one of the detective serials they used to listen to on the radio. They'd even given Bucky the recipe, but he'd only asked what the use in that would be. The company mattered as much to him as the food.

Steve tries desperately not to think of that now, setting the plate down in front of Bucky. If Bucky recognizes this as the apartment where he shot Fury, he's yet to acknowledge it. He hasn't looked around or even spoken; he seems to regard the consumption of pancakes as a mission, and he doesn't move until the plate is before him.

There shouldn't be anything in the pancakes that could upset his stomach, not unless HYDRA's had him on nothing but IVs for seventy years. Steve was deliberately light on the amount of butter and syrup for fear of irritating Bucky's body.

Bucky's first bite is slow, methodical. Then he digs in the way he used to and only then does Steve allow himself to breathe, slumping into the chair at the far end of the table. "You like 'em, Bucky?"

He stills his fork just long enough to swallow. "The commander's were better," Bucky says, guileless as a child, before picking up right where he left off.

"Sure thing, Bucky." Steve holds in a sigh. Bucky's here. He's _alive._ He's eating pancakes in Steve's kitchen rather than trying to beat him senseless. All of that is much more important than the fact that Steve's friend has developed terrible taste.

Besides, they can work on that along with everything else.


End file.
